A gateway to discovering and tracking the descendants of the original New Netherland Brouwer progenitors, namely Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, Jan (or Johannes) Brouwer of Flatlands and Willem Brouwer of Beverwijck (Albany).

Sunset at Gowanus Bay

Sunset at Gowanus Bay, Henry Gritten, 1851

Friday, September 20, 2013

Church Records (Part IV), New York City

This set of files from the William B. Bogardus Collection consists of extracted entries from records of churches found in New York City or its predecessor, New Amsterdam.

New York Reformed Dutch Church, 1801-1811. Here are five pages of hand written notes, apparently transcribed by and received from a correspondent of William B. Bogardus. Not all are Browers, there are other names as well. The source is not stated but I imagine that they were taken from the New York Reformed Dutch Church Records found in the "Vosburgh Collection."

Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York. Ok, this is the big one. There are 22 pages in this file. It was too large to be uploaded to RootsWeb FreePages so it is being made available on Google Drive. Download it. The file will be easier to work with and it won't be available forever. The file is very nice. It is typed, very clear and easy to use. The entries are taken from the Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York as they were published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record beginning with volume 5 in 1874. Baptisms, marriages and member lists were published pretty much continuously in the NYGB Record beginning with volume 5 through, at least, volume 70 in 1939. This file includes baptisms and marriages (member lists are not here) and it is very likely that every person named Brouwer, Brower, etc. who is recorded either as a parent, child, or witness to a baptism, or found in a marriage record in the New Amsterdam and New York Reformed Dutch Church Records is included (although I have not confirmed this so don't hold me to it). The volume and page from where each entry was taken is also included.
The baptism records of the New Amsterdam and New York Reformed Dutch Church were also published in two volumes by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society in 1901 and 1902 as volumes 2 and 3 of Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, edited by Thomas Grier Evans (vol. 2) and Tobias Alexander Wright (vol. 3). The two volumes include an index and therefore are much easier to use when compared to the records as published in the individual issues of the NYGB Record. The marriages from 1639 to 1801 were originally published in one volume, in 1890, titled, Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York; Marriages from 11 December 1639 to 26 August 1801, edited by Samuel S. Purple. To my knowledge, the membership lists have not been separately published. Digital versions of the baptism records are available online at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's website (membership required). There is both a searchable and browse-able option. Both the baptisms and marriages are also available as searchable databases at American Ancestors, the website of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society (membership required). They are organized in three databases, "New York, NY: Marriages in the Reformed Dutch Church, 1639-1801"; "New York, NY: Parents & Witnesses, Dutch Reformed Church, 1629-1730"; and "New York, NY: Parents & Witnesses, Dutch Reformed Church, 1731-1800."

13th Street Presbyterian Church, New York City, NY. The source is not stated here. There are only two persons named Brower among eighteen records noted. The others may be Brouwer or Bogardus descendants. I have not made an effort to confirm who they might be.

Baptism, Marriage and Burial Index cards of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York. This file is a copy of index cards received from the archivist/parish recorder of Trinity Church in 1991 by a correspondent of Bill Bogardus. There is not much use in them except to inform us of the names of those named BROWER found in the church baptism and marriage records. The Trinity Church Parish records were published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, beginning with volume 67, number 3 (1936) at page 201. They begin in the mid 1700s, and many of the baptisms took place at Albany or at "Mohawks," meaning the area of the Mohawk River. You will therefore find a number of Albany and Schenectady area Dutch families in the Trinity Church Parish records. This is the same issue of the NYGB Record that contains John Reynolds Totten's, "Brouwer (Brower-Brewer) Family Notes." This file is also too large for RootsWeb and so in online using Google Drive.

Above are ten more files, I think that with the next post we'll take care of the the files that deal with New Jersey church records. As always, you are advised to confirm what is found here with the original source.

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